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*looks pointedly at the Reader* Got anything you want to loan me? Just the once?

(You have to admit: a TARDIS would be great for vacation+catch-up work.)

~Z

Some interesting points. Interesting points which make me want to take some of that into account with the next thing I write! Unfortunately, I write/publish somewhat slowly, so I'm not sure how immediately effective that could be, but...I'll still keep it in mind. Especially the last two points. And hopefully I *will* be posting some things soonish. Maybe. Hopefully. End of semester is a poor time to be saying that, but I'm a daredevil today.

In terms of making the agents accessible: any tips on how to do that gently? I immediately think a bit of how JKR reintroduces characters at the beginning of each book, but possibly done more simply? For instance, kind of weaving in bits of information near the beginning, but not pausing to recap a little?

Come to think of it, Tamora Pierce does this as well...actually, if I pick up the first book of hers within reach, Briar's Book (fourth in a series), this is what I get in the first chapter:

-Briar himself, the third person POV character for this chapter, gets reintroduced bit by bit as the plot starts up. Little bits of his past and his present, what he's learning, who he is, how he acts in different situations--it gets presented through mentions, comparisons, even dialogue with other characters (including one who's never met him before, but has a very good reason for doing so). We get a good sense of who he is and where he's been (and currently is) in life without the author ever really stopping for a couple paragraphs to throw the information at us. Everything is just woven in, in a way that doesn't really seem forced--just a tiny bit introspective, if that.

-Briar's adoptive sisters and their teachers mostly just get establishing details of their names and what they do in life, though to be fair, they're not in this chapter at all. Only Sandry appears: accordingly, we get little notes on her personality, which, considering that they inform Briar's responses to her, fit in very well.

-Briar's teacher, Rosethorn, gets a lot more, which makes sense since she's quite present in the chapter. We first get her name and occupation, in the context of Briar's thoughts to do with why they're in the city at all. In the same paragraph, we find out a little bit about her strength of will, still in the same context. On the next page, we get a physical description and Briar's past reaction to it--which help establish her further, both because (though it's not mentioned now) Rosethorn is a bit vain about her face and because Briar's reaction does actually reflect on her personality. We also get a brief mention of her power and what she's actually teaching Briar. A few pages later, we get another establishing detail or two about her in connection with Briar, before she reappears in person. Then we get only one or two more establishing hints, still in the context of Briar's thoughts.

And I know it's the next chapter, but I want to mention that that one starts off reintroducing a recurring secondary character through the eyes of his niece (Sandry). It also introduces Sandry. In the first three paragraphs, we get a good bit of physical description (and a bit of recent history) in a way that makes sense. We open with them having tea and being pleased to see each other, continue with a mention that it's been a hard winter in the time elapsed since the last book, and flow into the second paragraph with Sandry reflecting on how that winter affected her uncle (using physical description to also show emotional state) and seguing very naturally from there into briefly describing why he dresses simply, which says a good deal about both his personality and his strength as a ruler. In the third paragraph, we get physical description of Sandry, with hints of personal description, in the context of her having dressed up on purpose.

And I'm going to cut myself off here, because as fun as it is to go on analyzing, there are at least three more characters to talk about, and this will just become essay length.

My point with all this? This is the fourth book in a series, with nine characters to reintroduce within the first couple chapters, not to mention bits of the setting. Looking at it, I think her methods actually could be adapted well to missions, though they might have to be shortened--though, then again, most missions don't involve eight or more agents! I think weaving in descriptions could be done, though it might take some practice and editing to make sure it flows logically. A nice little challenge! I'm going to try to take it.

Any further ideas?

--

Reintroducing agents more might also help with my own reasons for not reading all the recent missions. Those primarily boil down to:

-I don't know the canon, and if the agents didn't start off in ones I did know, and at a time when I had free time to read missions, I'm usually not going to follow them in. Unless the summary *really* grabs me, but with a canon I don't know...that can be hard.

As for what happened with Blank Sprite...I think I was actually a beta early on? The problem is: canon I don't know, characters I don't feel I know too well yet...the latest summaries were interesting, and more and more I'm thinking I might go back and read it from the beginning, but--that's the thing. When part 12 is going up, at a busy time, going back to the beginning unfortunately becomes a bit daunting, especially if you're unfamiliar with most of what's involved. However, given I'm pretty sure some of my favorite tropes showed up by the end, I may have to go back and give it a proper go. It's an impressive piece of work, and I've been both glad and impressed to watch the parts keep going up, even if I wasn't reading at the time.

~Z

I voted for Procedural Codes. It's been a long time since we had a decent look at the DIA, and with the loss of Black and Irvine's spinoff their canon is mostly appearances where they're causing way more trouble than they should for people. (I take my share of the blame in this, since Selene was I think the very first recipient of DIA harassment.) So I think this would be excellent to see - and the characters sound like a good sparking point.

For the second question, I also ticked Fish and Feathers. As (I think) the only writer for the DRD (no, I take it back; apparently someone did it way back in '05), I'd be excited to see more of it. And, again, the characters sound fun.

For the final question, I'm afraid I ticked Friday the Thirteenth as a potential problem. Time travel in HQ is... a tricky prospect, and again, I say this as culprit number one. I feel like it can work as a one-off incident (Morgan's little accident, for instance), but sustained, deliberate time travel in HQ has been wisely kept away until now. It just has too many ways to break everything - and, more to the point, too many ways that it should break everything, and would need the story to be unreasonably warped to prevent it. (A solitary example: technology which can impersonate a living being is ridiculously common across the multiverse. Therefore, if time travel is possible in HQ, someone should by now have gone back and replaced all of DAVD with holo-androids before their deaths in Crashing Down, and snuck the real agents off to hide somewhere until the present.)

I also don't like that 'thin line between HQ and Emergencies' part. 'One person protects [compact setting] from disaster every week' doesn't work very well even in more coherent settings; in the PPC, there are hundreds of people (starting with the Flowers, and running down through all the Time Lords and anyone else with temporal sensitivity) who should notice this. Would the Notary let some kid muck around in time? Would Morgan let a child do what she sees as her job, protecting HQ? Would the Flowers tolerate meddling in the PPC's already-fractured internal timeline?

hS

"Same here," she said. "It was really nice to meet you! I'm going to have to ask Jacques why he never bothered introducing us--it's a real shame this didn't happen sooner."

((:D Quite true!))

"Pull up a chair," he said, and offered his hand. "Jacques Bonnefoy, ESAS, and may I say, you look lovely?"

This chapter starts out light and easy - too easy. The fact that Sergio and Nikki are able to get exactly what they're looking for sets off all sorts of alarm bells (and it's good to see that the agents are genre-savvy enough to pick up on that!).

And then... action sequence! I think this was really well-written, and I say that as someone who has great difficulty writing action. :) It serves to increase the dissonance between the idea that the Factories are behind this, and the actual events we're seeing. I'm glad I saved this all to read at once, because I'd hate to get caught in cliffhangers down the line.

You also continue to build the background suspense over what the heck is up with Sergio's history. I'm really looking forward to getting that one answered. :)

Favourite line: “… We are being shipped by canons?"

hS

I was a bit dubious to start with - Blank Sprite is way outside my usual canons - but the story does a good job of filling me in on what's going on. It provides just enough information about the canons to support the story, without going into an encyclopaedia article.

Actually, the place where the description gets a bit overwrought is the agents. Lines like Nikki's response to Anne about the Vanguard:

“Yes. It works really well, and my magic stopped changing randomly[...] well, I still became a mermaid a couple of times while I was bathing, but I think you did a great job anyway!”

... have a bit too much of an 'as you know, Bob' feel to them at times. Something of the kind was necessary, I think, but possibly not this blatantly.

The story itself is good, and I like the way it's slowly unfolding. We start on a mission, then slip into something that sounds like a Jurisfiction story - and then the Factories rear their head. It all builds up quite neatly, and hints at more to come.

(Yes, there will probably be 15 separate review posts; I'm sneaking this in between pieces of work.)

hS

Now, in fact. I'm going to review as I go along, so watch this space.

hS

I pretty much reply to anything I read - I just don't read anything. It's a combination of a number of factors:

-I don't have much extended 'free time' on the computer, and what I do have (at home), I use for other things (ie, games).

-I don't like reading long things on a phone.

-Missions today are much, much longer than they used to be.

-I don't know most of the canons people are working in these days; relatedly, the habit of mentioning what canon a mission is in in the subject line has been lost, so the ones I do know are hidden away.

-I don't know the agents, and most stories nowadays are built around the assumption that you do. The first part springs out of all the foregoing, but it's a definite vicious cycle: I don't know the agents, so I can't get into the missions, so I don't get to know the agents...

hS

What a coincidence! Has anyone worked out the names of the mini-Balrogs yet? I definitely want one too!

Twice over the years, I've had dreams that were basically fully plotted stories. I wrote down everything I could remember immediately after waking up . . . unfortunately, I was unable to find the paper with the notes tonight, so they may be dead in the water. But just for the sake of sharing the ideas with you folks:

[the one where zookepers secretly worship an ancient nature deity]
After discovering something primal and powerful buried underneath their land, the higher-up zookeepers begin to follow a dark path, and the lives of neither the animals they once cared about, nor their own human coworkers, hold much value to their rapidly slipping consciences. But then again, their new god holds their lives in equally low regard.

[the one that I barely remember but basically looked at a haunted property from a historical perspective throughout many decades]
Before it was restored and remodeled into the modern-day community center, that building has been many things over the years. The warm, safe home of a broken family. A hideout for Prohibition-dodgers. An ostensible dormitory that morphed into a college party house. A sanctuary for the homeless. But two things have always been constant: the deaths, and the black cat.

So yeah. If I don't find those notes, I'll need to do some serious focused thought on these to be able to recreate all the details from the original dreams. And I'm more focused on my PPC fiction anyway, so. Probably don't count on seeing these published ever? But here's a just-for-fun poll, all the same.

—doctorlit, found by stories in his sleep

So, if any of you have heard of Mark Oshiro (of the Mark Does Stuff series - where he experiences media for the first time, for our entertainment! Though he's also been doing some writing of his own, including Anger is a Gift), he has covered all of the Young Wizards books to-date, and the Interrim Errantry novels. The clips are available on YouTube for those interested.

He has also shown interest in reading the Feline Wizards books... but since he does this through commissions, he won't be able to read the whole trilogy in one go! So if you'd be interested in having him read To Visit the Queen and The Big Meow, poke around the site, send some emails, and help commission the rest of those chapters! ;)

Or just listen to him read what he's done so far; that helps, too.

Although I love the Laura Davidson concept just that little bit more.

So two things: 1. I don't understand music on the same deep level of notes and such that twistey does, but there's some cleverness to the songs in this game I still want to bring up.

and 2. I realize this is a super tiny, minor fandom no one else here cares about but uh . . . I think this is at least somewhat interesting anyway?

So, for being an ultimately sub-par game, Epic Mickey has an utterly gorgeous and creative soundtrack, composed by James Dooley. The basic mechanic of the game is that you can advance past obstacles either by using paint to create new objects, or to brute force through things by dissolving existing objects with thinner. Most of the game levels (themed around Disney park attractions) have a music theme with five separate variations: the "base" version, a version where you're mostly using paint to get through, a version where you're only using paint to get through, a version where you're mostly using thinner to get through, and a version where you're only using thinner to get through. The paint-oriented versions tend to be focused on high-pitched chimes, and are generally gentler and more light-hearted feeling than the base version. The thinner versions tend to become very slow, with creepy violins and deep baritone notes added.

This feature was also used to hide musical easter eggs in the soundtrack. One level has the Micky Mouse Club March hidden in its music, at 1:02. It's identifiable, but the notes and tone are way off. Using lots of paint restores the tune to a more recognizable form. (Same point in time.) Using lots of thinner, though, appropriately wipes that tune completely out of the song!

—doctorlit hopes this is at least marginally interesting to anyone else . . .

Because I've got a bunch of different spin-off ideas running around, and no clue which one I want to write most. Here's my favorites!

Friday the Thirteenth

Grace Trouble Hopper Byron Null knew it was going to be a bad day when she found the first note. It simply read Sorry, in her own handwriting.

(Time shenanigans. Grace Null is many things: slacker, bartender, HQ kid, time traveler… and she and her TARDIS are often the thin line between HQ and Emergencies. This is made slightly more complicated by the nature of HQ, time, fandom, and the part where her moms are around in the present.)

Fish and Feathers

“Talia,” Sarah said, oddly calmly, without looking up from the shattered display case that a tense shift had thrown her into. “I am probably going to burst into flames in the near future.”

(Department of Redundancy Department - who are now very overworked by the load of time-loop fics. Sarah thought she was from World One. She thought she was human. And then she got chucked into a magical artifact from her homeworld, and now she's trying to balance being an Agent, being the partner of a very polyamorous Trekkie, and being a phoenix, too.)

Procedural Codes

“You should just kill her,” Nala said, not breaking eye contact with the black-clad figure in the interview cell, as her fingers itched to hold the lightsaber at her hip. “She’s Sith, it’d be a kindness.”

On the contrary, the Tiger Lily said. We’ve recruited her. Nala Sage, meet Beshaura Kell. Your new partner.

(Department of Internal Affairs - Nala Sage was a Jedi. Then she was a fugitive, then she was a DIA Agent. Now she just has to worry about not murdering her partner. Or getting murdered by her. A procedural, with lightsabers.)

Duct Tape

“I’m sorry,” Julia said, pointing across the lab, “I’m actually over there right now.” The agent turned, saw Agent Dann in profile - and in that moment, Julia ducked and scuttled under the workbench. Out of sight, out of mind, and she breathed a quiet “sorry” in the direction of her doppleganger as the agent who had been bothering her set off across the Lab in pursuit of Dann.

(Department of Sufficiently Advanced Technology! Newbie Julia takes on the multiverse, asking fun questions like “why is this broken?” and “how does that work?” and “why does this ‘Dann’ guy look just like me?”)

The survey!

Maybe I'll try to dig it out. It did look helpful for providing starting points and I think also explaining what kind of feedback (positive or constructive) authors would love to get.

~Z, very tired after a good but exhausting day

I try, a good chunk of the time? But I'm pretty sure there's a lot of issues, especially large-scale ones, I tend to miss. But I think that critiquing things is something you get better at with practice, same as with writing.

I just feel like I'm bad at criticism. And if I don't have anything to say, I don't see much point in saying it.

Of late, I've missed a lot of people's stuff between schoolwork, homework, and my own readimg and writing (Jeez, I still have a mission to work on! Paaaanic!). It is summer, so that may cool down, but OTOH, I've got a job lined up...

Also, I never really got into Ix's stuff. Just... didn't happen? I'm sorry, Ix. :-/

We've noticed here that, as a general trend, a decent chunk of the writing on the Board (for example, Ix and Delta's recent mission) hasn't really gotten much of a response. So, I'd like to ask: why aren't people leaving more responses?

For my part, I've run into cases where I really don't have the time to read some longer work until it's fallen off the front page and responding seemed silly or I'd ended up giving up on actually getting around to reading the thing. (There's also the case, like with Delta and Ix's mission, where I was a beta reader, which means I'd already left my comments and repeating them again felt rather redundant.)

My current hypothesis is that a noticeable part of the problem comes from the community is drifting older and real-life-having-er (due to a slowdown in the number of newbies because we're hiding off in a near-invisible corner of the internet) which has left us collectively with less time to read stuff.

- Tomash

I've always been one to trust in the advice to write for yourself rather than for others, but even so it's become disturbingly common nowadays for more than a few Boarders to have devoted days or even weeks of effort to writing, proofreading, and the complex business of beta-reading, post the final product on the Board in the hopes of receiving reader compliments and feedback, and be met with utter silence while everyone else pays far more attention to other Boarders, events, or things. It's happened several times in my case as well, much to my chagrin, and although I have yet to have my writing inadvertently upstaged by drama I'll gladly second Tomash's sentiment regarding this issue. Reader critique is essential for writers to move forward and failing to provide it may result in the risk of stagnation on the author's part and a decline in work quality - something I myself know from experience over the past few years as a PPC writer.

And as for the whole deal with consistent drama, this was the reason for my (admittedly misguided and poorly worded) statement that I was disappointed with the community in the aftermath of a former member leaving and requesting to be locked out as penance for attacking the Board on behalf of someone who was banned twice in a row. For all intents and purposes, consider that statement retracted. I came to the PPC because I thought it to be drama-free unlike certain communities I had left behind (or was kicked out of) over the years, and I've made a lot of great friends thanks to it; in hindsight I should've known that the Ironic Overpower was already setting its sights on my naivete regarding the dearth of drama at the time. As Neshomeh put it, though, "neither [the banned person] nor any other individual has the power to ruin the PPC unless we give it to them by losing our cool over them." I know there have been quite a few slip-ups over the years - some worse than others, as Sergio noted - but from what I've been seeing, The Nameless Admin has done a good job dealing with most of the things that troubled us since. I guess my earlier bitterness was due to a combination of singling out the drama without considering the good things this community has to offer and sealing myself in a mental panic room whenever I see things going south (which is a very real bad habit my family has been helping me to break!).

While I did consider leaving myself not long after the incident Sergio mentioned, I quickly decided against it in part because I still have obligations regarding my PPC characters in the future. I will however repeat my assent with regards to Tomash - in no small part because I too know all too well the feeling of months of hard work being rendered absolutely useless.

The main planet my Cycle of Worlds pitch is set on has basically space elves... except they look like four-armed lizardmen. But still, magitech is so much fun, and the idea of your first pitch kind of reminds me of the premise of Cowboys and Aliens... wild west meets sci-fi. Mashups like that are just a blast.